


an hour back home

by norikae



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 14:46:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19378864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norikae/pseuds/norikae
Summary: “Oh,” Kihyun says, softly. “No, it’s just… never mind.” He could’ve sworn he’d heard - but then, but then.Everything reflects light. It is the only way we see.





	an hour back home

**Author's Note:**

> for my beloved most cutest third favourite scorpio lib❤
> 
> sorry for writing the same story eighty different ways i promise something different is in the works

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

Kihyun considers this, pen down and graphic calculator set aside, as Minhyuk rolls around on his bed, Switch tossed aside, sighing noisily as he goes.

Kihyun knows what Minhyuk wants. He gives in.

"Yes, Min?" he asks, spinning his chair around to look him sternly in the eye. "Was there something you wanted?"

Minhyuk peers at him upside down, head hanging just off the edge of his bed. "I'm bored," he says, airily. "Ki, Ki, Ki, Ki."

Kihyun hums patiently, even though the call for attention is unnecessary when he is looking straight at Minhyuk and he knows it. Even though he usually is, even if he doesn't intend to be. "Yes?"

Mirth breaks across Minhyuk's face, warms his handsome features. He's looked tired recently - why, Kihyun hasn't presumed to ask. But like this he looks rosy, blooming into life. It looks right, sticks irrevocably in Kihyun's chest, reminds him that in an ideal system forces left unopposed are unstoppable.

"Play with me," he suggests. It's light, innocuous; next to his ribcage the Switch burbles away on the game select screen.

Kihyun picks up his pen again - the erasable sort, because he's doing math - and starts clicking it on and off, just for something to do. He pitches his voice at the precise frequency for nonchalance when he asks, "Oh?"

Minhyuk raises his legs - balancing the force by planting his arms flat on either side of him on the bed - straightens them out, and pulls them up, up, up until his body is bent at an acute angle, his feet hanging over his head like some kind of benign scorpion. He lets them dangle, the soles of his feet bare and slightly pink, before planting them back down on the mattress bent at the knee like they had been before. He grins expectantly. Dutifully, Kihyun applauds.

"Play with me," Minhyuk repeats, plainly.

If the points have sight of each other, that line should be the solution. Right?

Somehow he has the distinct impression that isn't the case. Kihyun glances at the door, making sure it's shut - not locked, because that would be strange, but his parents aren't home, anyway. The only security it offers is his own peace of mind.

He looks back, where Minhyuk is still looking at him expectantly. An ideal system shouldn't exist. And yet.

Sighing thunderously, Kihyun sets his pen onto the desk, swatting Minhyuk aside. He stops thinking when large hands hook themselves into the sides of his sweater, folding him into an embrace when he climbs onto the bed.

 

\---

 

Minhyuk is seated knees drawn up on the hood of someone else's car out in the back of a diner parking lot, and Kihyun can't look at him, but he can't look away, either.

He's blowing bubbles out of his gum. Kihyun grimaces - and Minhyuk laughs when he sees it, because they both know that Kihyun hates the taste.

"It's not that bad," he chortles suddenly, shifting his legs so one is resting against the metal, the other still supporting his weight. "I got grape, this time." Then, voice lower: "Wanna try?"

"Get off the car," Kihyun says abruptly, instead of answering. "What if the owner sees you."

"This is Itaewon," Minhyuk replies, but he slides off anyway, dusting the hood off lightly after him. He comes to a halt in front of Kihyun, smile ineffable, and drops into a grand bow. "But your wish is my command."

And then, brazen: "Where to next, your highness?"

For a moment Kihyun doesn't know how to react - never does. In these splices Minhyuk is foreign, irreverently beautiful, utterly incomprehensible.

Then his senses come back to him with a start, and Kihyun huffs out a snort that comes out a lot more sure than he feels. He reaches out - the distance is always shorter than he imagines - and shoves him lightly in the shoulder, sending him staggering a few steps away.

"Jimjilbang," he says, turning and beginning to walk. "It's the only reason I let you drag me here, remember? Yunho recommended one I wanna try out."

"Aah, yes yes. I forgot," Minhyuk giggles, thudding after him with delight. "I never win with you."

 _It's funny you should say that_ , he doesn't say, when Minhyuk catches up to him and loops their arms together. Doesn't tug his arm back, either, to reclaim his dignity along with it. _Because if it's a zero sum game, the equation doesn't balance, does it?_

 

\---

 

"Who's that with Jisoo?" Changkyun asks, squinting across the canteen. He sips noisily from his cup as he waits for an answer.

Jooheon doesn't turn around to look when he replies. "Probably her new boyfriend," he says, disinterested. "The guys in Accounting would _not_ shut up about it last week."

“She’s a lovely girl,” Kihyun pipes in, helpfully. “For someone so popular she’s really nice. She lent me her cashcard for the photocopying machine when we were both studying late, once.”

“Not as nice as your _boyfriend_ ,” Jooheon drawls, a touch sly. “Where’s he today, anyway?”

Kihyun wrinkles up his nose in annoyance. “He’s not my boyfriend,” he says. Stabs at his rice with a little more vengeance than strictly necessary.

Even if he isn’t looking up he can feel Changkyun and Jooheon exchange a look. “Okay, your boy, then,” Jooheon says, carefully. “You’re with him like all the time, no?”

“He’s not that, either. He’s not my anything.” He’s inexplicably irritated - it isn’t that Kihyun detests the idea, or the implication. It’s just that - it’s just that, he thinks, _It’s just that it isn’t true_.

“If you’re sure, hyung,” Changkyun says, with that strange dark heavy gaze of his. Jooheon opens his mouth - looks at him again - and promptly shuts it, opting instead to nod in agreement beside him.

It’s plain to see they don’t believe him. Kihyun purses his lips - briefly considers staying silent, because he hates the idea of trying to lay them out bare for dissection. Hates the fact that he, too, doesn’t know.

But his mouth is miles ahead of him. “He - he isn’t like that,” Kihyun blurts aloud. “Minhyuk isn’t the kind of person you can just - just try to make sense of, you know?”

Changkyun nods to show he’s listening, even if the dip of his head is very slow. “What sort of person is he then, hyung?” he asks, and the interest, Kihyun knows, is genuine.

The kind you can’t define. The kind you’re not sure you can stand. The kind who elicits loyalty you hadn’t even been aware you were capable of, not until you’re standing on the edge of the world fighting for him to stay when every other voice echoes a resounding _go_.

“Weird,” Kihyun coughs instead, nudging Changkyun’s foot with his under the table. “C’mon, finish up. I need to drop by the library to get some books.”

 

\---

 

In Minhyuk's room the light is low, and Kihyun cannot hide how he wants, wants, wants.

Minhyuk’s hands are up his shirt, thumbing at the skin of his belly. Kihyun shifts, and smooths his own over the contours of Minhyuk's waist. He is warm, almost unbearably so - when Kihyun touches it sears him, paints the insides of his lids in liquid gold.

They’ve been kissing for what feels like hours; his mouth is sore, feels bruised from the imprints Minhyuk has left on his skin. Kihyun shifts restlessly, thigh on thigh, and drags a hand away from the dip of muscle to cradle the back of Minhyuk’s head to his, pulling him impossibly closer still.

It feels like the world has narrowed to this. A hand is on his thigh now, thumb pressing against the underside. Minhyuk’s lips finally pull away, trail along the side of his jaw and down his throat. Leaves a white-hot memory as he goes.

“I wish you liked me,” he swears he hears Minhyuk mumble, the words instantly disappearing into the skin at the base of Kihyun’s neck. He mouths there, and Kihyun keens - feels coherent thought flee, feels himself give in.

Then his brain catches up, and Kihyun blinks blearily through the haze. “Min?” he asks, hoarsely, trying not to be distracted by the mouth skating lines into his skin. “Min - what did you just say, I’m not sure I heard you right.”

Minhyuk detaches himself, leans back only just enough to look at him curiously, smiling. “Say what?” he asks. His thumbs are drawing circles into Kihyun’s sides. Through his drawn curtains a slice of sun slips through, makes his face eerie, one part light to three parts shadow. “I didn’t say anything, Ki.”

“Oh,” Kihyun says, softly. “No, it’s just… never mind.” He could’ve sworn he’d heard - but then, but then.

Everything reflects light. It is the only way we see.

 

\---

 

It's cold outside, this late into fall, and Kihyun stamps his feet on the pavement to keep his blood moving so that he can keep warm.

"Is your - friend coming," Hyungwon asks, rubbing sleepily at his nose with the back of his hand. There's always something languid to the quality of his movements, like he's wading in and out of a dream. "It's like 7.23."

Kihyun doesn't miss the hesitation there, but doesn't bring it up, either. The film festival they're due for starts in just over twenty minutes, and they'd wanted to walk around earlier, soak in the atmosphere just because.

"I'll call him again," Kihyun says, slightly sheepish. Hoseok and Hyungwon are too nice to mind, really, but the principle of it has him colouring in apology. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and is beginning to dial when a Kakao notification pops up on his screen.

_Minhyuk: sorry i JUST got off work you guys go ahead_

That… isn't like Minhyuk. He adores social activity - relishes in it like nobody else Kihyun knows. He's the kind of boy who starts a party by himself in the faith that everyone else is going to join in. And his energy is infectious, so inevitably they always do.

Kihyun hits the call button, hopping a little impatiently as he waits for it to ring.

Minhyuk picks up on the second trill. "Ki?" he asks, sounding distracted.

"Hey," Kihyun breathes, inexplicably askew all of a sudden. "Min. Um. Are you okay?"

A rustling, and the distant blare of car horns. Minhyuk inhales, and the word breaks across two beats when he says, "Yeah." And then, "Sorry, it's been a hectic day."

"I'll go over," Kihyun says suddenly, dutifully avoiding the stares his friends are now giving him. "Do you mind?"

"Huh?" Minhyuk sounds confused. "I mean, I don't,  but you guys should hang out, right?"

Hyungwon and Hoseok are technically more his friends than Minhyuk's, but that doesn't mean a lot when Minhyuk, by overwhelming consensus, is devastatingly likable. Kihyun slides a glance over to the aforesaid two when he says, "It's fine." Next, "I'll be there in twenty."

From the other end of the line there is a silence like the moment before freefall before Minhyuk is breathing his throaty laugh. "Yoo Kihyun," he says, sounding strangely awed. "Sure. Let yourself in if I'm not back yet."

"Okay," Kihyun replies. "Um. See you later."

"Bye."

When the receiver clicks he turns to face Hyungwon, who's giving him that look again, the one that says his silence is born out of courtesy and nothing more. "Sorry guys. I have to...yeah."

" _You,_ " Hyungwon sighs. Beside him Hoseok gives Minhyuk a tiny smile. Then Hyungwon shakes his head, waving Kihyun off with the flap of a large hand.

"I'll see you another time," he tells him. "Shoo. Go."

  


He makes it to Minhyuk's in just under the promised duration. He probably isn't back yet; Kihyun is reaching for the pot under which he knows a spare set of keys hides when there is the sound of feet coming down the corridor. He looks up, vaguely worried one of Minhyuk's neighbours is going to think he's a burglar, even though surely they must've seen him coming and going all the time.

His worries are unfounded. Minhyuk cocks his head a little at him as he approaches, waving with a hand that has his keyring looped around a finger. "You're fast," he comments, and it has the hint of a laugh.

"Yeah, well." _I was worried_. "The bus came immediately." He'd caught a cab.

Minhyuk nods to himself as he passes Kihyun, who shuffles aside awkwardly to let him get the door. "Checks out."

"After you," he says, after he's unlocked the door and pushed it open, gesturing Kihyun in as if ceremony was ever a question between them. Kihyun, after all, lives with his parents; Minhyuk does not.

He commits to a jerky, joking half bow as he heads in anyway, turning around and walking backwards once he's passed the door and shrugged his bag off to watch Minhyuk shuck his shoes off and come in, too.

Minhyuk is fiddling with the lock when he speaks next. "I really am fine, you know," he hums. It seems so inconsequential, when he puts it like that. "It was just insanely hectic today."

Kihyun can't see his face. He peers up from where he's been petting Gogi, Minhyuk's cat; with the lights still off and the door shut he doesn't know how Minhyuk is looking at him.

"Should I go?" he offers slowly, hand stilling. Gogi's head dips expectantly to accommodate a touch that doesn't come, and she glances up sharply at him, but he isn't paying attention.

There's a _click_ as the lights come on. Minhyuk flashes him a pointy-toothed smile from the doorside. "My mother would have my head if I made you go home after you came all this way," he says, even though there's no way she'd find out. Kihyun isn't sure she even knows who he is. You told your parents about your friends, but.

Were they friends?

Minhyuk continues. "Unless you wanna go back to Hyungwon and Hoseok-hyung?" His tone is open. Minhyuk very rarely has anything to hide. "I'm sorry you came all this way…"

When Kihyun makes to get up Minhyuk strides swiftly over and offers him a hand, tugging him into a standing position. The touch lingers longer than it has to, he thinks, before it pulls away.

"Nah. I - would rather be with you, anyway," he says, looking at the ground. He acutely misses the warmth.

Minhyuk breathes out a snort. "Ah, and avoid third wheeling, right?" He's leaning against the back of the loveseat, now, arms crossed over his chest. Gogi winds around his ankles; he glances down, smiling, and coos.

Kihyun is glad Minhyuk isn't looking at him, because he can feel his thoughts wrought clear on his face. “Yeah,” he manages, with a laugh. “They’re great, but you know.”

Minhyuk smiles at him then, this one small and personal. At the corner of his eyes there is an honest exhaustion, but otherwise he looks content. “Come sit a while with me? We can watch this new anime I just started.”

He cannot remember an instance where Minhyuk has asked and he has been able to say no. “Sounds good,” he says, picking Gogi up and following Minhyuk in.

 

\---

 

Sometimes it is difficult to look at Minhyuk and see anything besides an image diffused through layers of glass, his features diffracted into little more than a blurry haze.

Or maybe that’s the alcohol talking. Minhyuk is telling him a story - they’re at an izakaya - they actually came with someone, but he’s been in the toilet too long - who was it - why, again?

“So this guy,” Minhyuk is saying, five sizes too large and pronunciation sloppy, “Thiiiis guy, he’s got this bigass head, right. And, and he wassa. Sniper’s -” He giggles. Reaches for his glass, and drinks some more. “Sniper’s dream.”

Kihyun bursts into laughter, unable to control himself, and that seems to break the dam of Minhyuk’s composition as well. “Sniper’s dream,” he howls, banging a fist against the table with the force of it all. His head goes down, and something goes clinking to the table. He’s too busy laughing to care.

“Nononono. Sittup. Ki.” Minhyuk’s slurring, and he pushes a sluggish hand clumsy against the top of Kihyun’s head. “Sittup, I gotta tell you theeerest.”

“Okay,” Kihyun promises, even though he’s having a nice time against the cool wood of the table. He plants both his hands on the table top, and braces himself back into a seating position, barely avoiding knocking into Minhyuk’s nose on his way back up. Then he focuses all his attention, and looks.

Minhyuk stares back, really hard.

“Ahh, what’reyoudoing,” Kihyun asks, cracking a smile. “You’re so funny, Min.” His head is a little heavy. He rests it on his hand.

“I was saying,” Minhyuk starts, lurching forwards a little, then stops suddenly.

Kihyun raises an eyebrow, even though his eyelids are heavy and his eyes are falling shut. He hums his reply through a momentary rest. “Yeah?”

Minhyuk makes a sound like a word aborted mid-syllable. “You’re so nice to me,” he says, and it’s clear, even if the edges of the consonants are meshed together. He continues slowly - Kihyun, eyes still shut, imagines the way he might be speaking now, mouth opening very wide and then closing very tightly in turn. “Kihyun-ah. If I could...could tellyou then you would know.”

There’s honey poured all over the cogs of his brain, clear and viscous and sweet. Kihyun listens to Minhyuk from four rooms away, halfway into a doze, before something clicks, and he forces his eyes open to try to claw back the moment. “Wait,” he says, “I have to tellyoutoo.”

“I think he’s fallen asleep,” comments a voice, far clearer than both of theirs had been. Kihyun turns his head up to look towards its source - the wrong way, so he turns three-quarters of a circle and ends up squinting at his quarry upside down - and blinks dumbly for a while, not quite sure what it is he’s looking at.

“Oh, hyung,” he manages when the image loads, relieved. He can’t remember what they’d been talking about; staying awake is tiring him out. “You’re here.”

“I was gone for five minutes,” Hyunwoo says, before pulling out his phone, giving first Minhyuk’s prone form and then Kihyun an unimpressed but not unkind gaze as he does. “I’ll get us a cab.”

“You’re the best,” Kihyun mumbles gratefully, before he lets his head drop to his hands and passes out.

 

\---

 

Kihyun retrieves the key from under the pot, jams it into the lock, twists the thing and lets himself in unceremoniously, nearly tripping over Gogi when he strides into the room.

Minhyuk is, as expected, on the couch. He looks up, surprised, and says, “Kihyun?”

Kihyun looks at him, and feels all his bravado threatening to flee. He wedges his mouth open. Says, without preamble, “My Netflix password is _gogi931103_.”

Folding his laptop closed and setting it down to the side, Minhyuk nods to show he’s listening, even if his furrowed brow says he doesn’t know what’s going on. “I know,” he tells him, slowly. “I set it for you.”

He’d forgotten that part. He wonders what it says, that he’d been equally convinced he’d chosen it for himself. “- yeah,” Kihyun coughs out, continuing. “And my lockscreen is a photo you took.”

“That one sunset from last November?” Minhyuk asks, sounding surprised. “Still?”

Because it had been two days after his own birthday, and Minhyuk had dragged them both out onto his tiny balcony in the freezing cold to have a two-person soju party to celebrate them both turning drinking age. They’d kissed, after, fast and then torturously slow, and then later - Kihyun remembers the marks had taken nearly weeks to fade.

“Because -” he says, tearing himself out of the memory. “Because - don’t make me say it, Min, I don’t think I can.”

They’ve been placed at odd angles to each other this entire time. Minhyuk gets off the couch and walks towards Kihyun, who’s standing on the edge of the carpet, socks still on. “Ki.” He sounds - apprehensive, almost scared. “You have to tell me what you’re trying to say.”

“That day at the izakaya,” he begins, voice unbearably small. "You said you. You had something to tell me."

Minhyuk is looking at him like he knows the answer but is too shy to raise his hand in front of a watching class. "I - did," he says. "I do."

"I…" Kihyun stops and looks around, at Minhyuk's tiny student flat, the singular sofa in front of the tv, the potted plants Minhyuk had dragged him along to pick. "You were out cold. But I had something to say to you, too."

Minhyuk's brows draw up in surprise. Fall, gracefully, as he breathes, "Oh."

"You -" Kihyun starts, then aborts again. "I've been." He's spent days thinking about what to say, rushed over to do it before he lost steam, but in the end he's left tongue tied in Minhyuk's living room, listening to the sound of cars sailing along the road outside.

He looks back to Minhyuk, who's still watching him. "I'm going to kiss you," he decides, out loud. "And it's...it's not because we're gonna bang." He moves into Minhyuk's space, watches as his arms fall open to close around him, a comforting weight resting against the small of his back.

"Okay," Minhyuk says, dumbly, eyes not straying from his.

Kihyun closes the distance. It isn't different from any other time they've kissed - slower, maybe, but all other things considered, the same. He wonders how he'd missed that, all along.

They break, and Kihyun lowers himself from the balls of his feet, slowly pulling away. He leaves his hand where it is - curled against Minhyuk's chest, loosely knitting itself into his shirt.

“When were you going to tell me?” Minhyuk asks, softly. “I really didn’t - I wouldn’t have known.”

“I…” Kihyun starts, slowly. “I would have waited,” he says. For all intents and purposes, he already had been.

"You," Minhyuk says, and brushes a thumb against the slope of Kihyun's cheek slowly. "You are so silly. What am I supposed to do with you."

"Says the one who failed his Introduction to Chemistry final and had to retake this year," Kihyun snipes back, but without any heat whatsoever. "Let me take you out, duh." Pause. "If that was a yes. Was that a yes?"

Minhyuk catches both his hands, tugs him backwards so they can both fall onto the couch. "Of course it was," he says, squeezing him into a hug. "Stupid."

 

\---

 

_coda:_

When Kihyun turns up at the lunch table, hand linked with Minhyuk's, not a single blink is had, no beat skipped.

He clears his throat anyway, slightly nervous for some reason. "I thought you should all know," he tells them, "That we're dating."

"You've _been_ dating," Jooheon tells them both, not unkindly. "You only just realised it. That's all."

Hyungwon looks up from his laptop, where he is doubtlessly finishing a term paper not due for two months so he can proceed to sleep in all of the remaining classes. "It's true."

He glances at Minhyuk. "You heard them," he says, shrugging. "Just glad we figured it out now and not, like, never."

He wonders if it counts if he hadn't been aware - but then discounts the variable, because it doesn't matter anymore.

Some lines intersect only once or twice. An asymptote draws infinitely nearer, but will never touch. Kihyun reaches for Minhyuk's hand, pulls him down to sit, and finds his own solution.


End file.
